


Thistle and Weeds

by Avelera



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Chases, Dwarven Rings of Power, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, Love, M/M, Metamorphosis, Mind Control, Nazgul - Freeform, Nazgul Thorin, Possession, Slow Build, The One Ring is Bad News, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: The Battle of the Five Armies is over, Fili has been crowned, and Thorin laid to rest with the Arkenstone and his father's ring. It is time for Bilbo to make the long, grief-stricken journey back to Bag End, leaving his heart buried within the Mountain.But the ring he carries has awakened greater forces. Bound together by fate and rings of power, Bilbo finds himself haunted upon the road by Thorin's memory, and by something far worse.





	1. Prologue: The Key, the Door, and the Ring

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been long in coming. In fact, it may indeed be the first fic I really set out to write in the Hobbit fandom. In an earlier iteration it was "Nightmares", which is still up here on AO3 but which never reached the end of the book and therefore never quite got to the ground that "Thistle and Weeds" covers that I was eager to reach. With the release of Battle of the Five Armies, I decided to start over and begin from there. For any familiar, this story also owes a great deal to "Talismans of Shannara" by Terry Brooks. 
> 
> This story will, to the best of my ability, update weekly.
> 
> I would like to give special thanks to the wonderful beta readers of this fic: gentbagginshield, yaaurens, and emsiecat!

A map, a key, and the promise of a hidden door. Thorin watched as Gandalf laid these out before the Company, conjuring the key as if from the air. With this map and key, they could open the passage into the mountain, discover if the drake was dead, or, if not, perhaps catch him unawares and end his restless sleep. If alive, they may yet still find the Arkenstone, and use it to summon the armies of the Dwarves that had long held back their aid.

When they had met those months past in Bree, it was as if a door of another kind opened in Thorin’s mind - the possibility of a return home, that dying ember in his heart receiving the smallest puff of breath, a spark of hope long dormant. They could go back, they could regain all that had been theirs. They could…

There was a shift in the air, a  _presence_ , and as if by a lodestone the eyes of every dwarf went to Gandalf’s hand, _sensing_.

“And what is more,” Gandalf said, reaching once more into the folds of his sleeve. A sense of weight, a great clamoring in their souls, as he produced a third object. “I believe this too belongs to you, Thorin son of Thrain.”

Thorin stared, fingers clenching instinctively at the sight that stopped his breath. A heavy ring of gold, set with a square cut sapphire deep as the fall of night. It glinted in the lamplight of the burglar’s home, and the Halfling in question leaned forward, his expression puzzled while all around Thorin the other dwarves sat transfixed.

“The ring of Thrain,” Thorin croaked, voice rough with disbelief. His hand reached out despite himself, then pulled back, fingers curling in. “How came you by this?”

“In the same manner as I did the map and key,” Gandalf said. A smile twitched at the corner of his lips, then grew somber, but took with it some of the shadows that had pressed in around the room. The wizard looked uncommonly pleased with himself. “Your father had his doubts regarding the assault on Moria. He was not certain the king, your grandfather, acted with all care in organizing the attack. Some feared that it was the mithril that occupied his mind, more than the safety of your people.”

Thorin grimaced, but did not contradict the wizard. Though many years since, he yet remembered the days before the assault: the heady excitement in the camp of the exiled dwarves of Erebor, like fine wine on empty stomachs. Thror burned with that zeal, as the armies of the seven clans arrived day by day, growing their ranks. His father, Thrain, had stood off to the side, a shadow in his intact eye.

“Your grandfather passed this, one of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves, on to his son before the battle was fought for safe keeping,” Gandalf said.

“I remember,” Thorin said, casting his mind back to that day. No one knew what happened to the seventh ring, though its powers were dearly missed when they made their settlement in Ered Luin all those decades later. It was said the Dwarven rings had the power to multiply wealth, from whence came the great riches of Erebor under Thror’s hand. The history of the rings stretched into the dimmest reaches of his people’s memory, into the Second Age more than two millennia before. They were not to be taken lightly, hence why they remained in the care only of the Dwarven Lords, the kings of each of the seven clans, among them his line: the Longbeards.

“Your father then vanished, but not before he and I spoke and he gave me these items into my care, and so I now pass them to you as you take up this cause,” Gandalf said. A hush fell amongst the other dwarves as Gandalf reached out his hand, placing the heavy ring upon the table where it settled with an audible _click._

“Why now? Why after so long?” Thorin said, struggling to tear his eyes from the ring to glare at Gandalf.

“I could ask the same of you. You are not an easy person to find. Your people were well-settled in the Blue Mountains, but you were on the road and nowhere to be found. It would not matter in any case, it was only when you accepted this task to face the dragon that the ring would do you any good,” Gandalf said.

“These are heirlooms of _our house_ ,” Kili snapped from the end of the table, rising half out of his seat. “You had no right to keep them from us!”

“Aye,” Dwalin rumbled beside Thorin. “What use does a wizard have with a dwarven ring?”

“Or a key into _our_ mountain, for that matter?” Balin said, echoing his brother’s tone of anger and disbelief.

“What does it matter, if we have them now?” Bombur said from the far end of the table, but was drowned out by a rising torrent of dwarven voices.

“Excuse me, I’m not sure I completely understand. What is this about rings…?” Thorin heard the hobbit speak up from behind him, but only because of his proximity as the shouting rose in volume.

“We could have made use of the ring _years_ ago!” Dori shouted, Ori pounding his fist to the table beside him and chiming in, though what it was was lost and the young dwarf himself looked vaguely confused.

“Enough,” Thorin sighed, only to be ignored.

“It would not have been of any use without the portents!” Oin bellowed, louder even than the crowd as he made up for his deafness.

“The portents may have been better if we had the ring fifty years ago!” Gloin argued with his brother.

“I said _enough_!” Thorin said, rising to his feet, and snatching the ring from the table.

He staggered. Silence fell like a hammer blow as the dwarves whipped around from their arguments to see Thorin struggling up from his knees where he had fallen. The ring was heavier than stone, indeed hundreds of times the possible weight of such an object. The burglar hovered over him out of the corner of his eye as he stared into his closed fist, at the winking sapphire that felt it might burrow its way through his flesh. His vambrace-clad arm thudded against the wooden table, palm up as he opened his hand, struggling to turn it and release the ring.

Gandalf _tsk_ ed with disapproval. “Do you think I am obstinate merely for the sake of it? None but the King of the Longbeards, in this case the King under the Mountain, may wield this ring.” With that, he reached into a pocket and drew out a length of heavy leather twine, stringing it through the ring and tying a knot in the end, then handed this to Thorin.

He accepted it warily, eyebrows shooting up as the ring held no more weight than any such object should. Thorin held it up to the light, the other dwarves craning in to see, then tested the weight of the ring, brushing it against his other palm, and immediately shuddered at the impossible weight as it brushed his skin. So, not an object to be trifled with, but how much so he had never truly known.

“A dwarf may sense it, and any might carry it as you do now, but none may wear it but one of Durin’s line who has been named king,” Gandalf said.

“Yet all of this will change, once we have taken the mountain,” Thorin murmured, studying the heavy gold band with its carven runes.

Gandalf smiled. “Once you would have said ‘if’ we recover the mountain. But come, the burglar has not even seen the contract, and there is much planning to be done ‘ere break of day.”

The Company, and Thorin as if only just remembering, turned to the hobbit who stood wringing his hands behind them, looking thoroughly bewildered by all this talk of rings and mountains, dragons and gold. He looked up upon feeling their eyes.

“Wait, what burglar?” the burglar said.

* * *

At times Thorin could almost forget that he bore the ring. It lay just over his heart, side by side with the key. Useless to all but the King under the Mountain, he imagined it grew lighter and heavier by turns. It took no great genius to know when those moments were: it hung impossibly heavy when the Lord of Rivendell whispered his poison, his doubts about the sickness of Durin’s line, and that night Thorin could feel the leather thong biting into his neck as the burglar listened to the shame of his family, spoken by an elf for all to hear.

Yet high above the Carrock, seeing his home as a solitary peak in the distance, its golden band was the warmth of a hearth against his breast, light as air. Whenever the Kingdom under the Mountain seemed within reach, the ring offered itself to him like a patient lover, but only when his gentler thoughts turned to it in return. It comforted him at night, in Beorn’s when sleep eluded him and Bilbo lay inches away beside him, the hobbit a question and a promise wrapped up in one, one he could not yet solve.

In Mirkwood, with Gandalf gone to who knew where, the paths winding deeper into a maddening forest, and finally within the cells of the Elvenking, hope seemed an impossibility. The leather thong cut into his neck, leaving weals upon his flesh, cold as a lump of ice against his breast and he knew it would not abide a dwarf lord who languished in his enemy’s prison. The ring of his forefathers carried its own geas: its only demand was that its bearer must _rule_.

Thorin might suspect it had some power of its own, some greater will than that of its master, for it stayed by his side through the rushing river and many dangers beside. He sensed with every passing day its presence growing in his mind, like a limb it became more a part of him the closer they traveled to the mountain. He sensed its will for him to reclaim the kingship, to increase the works of dwarven hands, and their gold.

It wasn’t until Lake-town that the voices began.


	2. The Shadow Rises

_Far to the south, over vast empty plains and darkened forests, a shadow of malice took to the air, nine ghosts trailing, fleeing east towards desolation. power surging, senses seeking as it was driven from its fortress in Dol Guldur. Not alone, and not without power for all the loss of its carefully constructed defenses, its armies that even now marched north. Not without intent, not without traps carefully laid throughout the world in millennia before, and ever had it grown, and grown…_

 

* * *

 

 

“No, no no…”

It was cold on Ravenhill. The ice seeped up through his armor, froze his hands and feet, and the numbness crept up his arms and legs. The wounds in his chest, his foot, his brow were sharp and ragged at the edges. Thorin could feel each pump of his heart dripping blood into his lungs, cutting short his breath. 

“Farewell, Master Burglar,” Thorin smiled. Bilbo clutched Thorin’s hand, the one that bore his grandfather’s ring. 

Those voices had risen like a tide in his mind the minute the Mountain was reclaimed, reminding him that he was king, and the ring had slipped on as if always meant to be there. It had felt right there. Durin’s heir once more returned to the throne under the mountain. Even when he had cast away his grandfather’s crown, he had not had the heart to cast aside his ring, the symbol of his house. 

It all seemed distant now, with Bilbo choking back tears above him. How unimportant to listen to the whispers in the first place, and for what? A city of ghosts and corpses, the golden light turned tainted and foul and Thorin wondered if perhaps they’d had it wrong all those months before when they gathered around Bilbo’s table and spoken of reclaimed homelands. Why did they not simply stay there? Never would the Thorin of that time have accepted it, but with the world darkening at its corners from the blinding white of the fields of ice, from the eagles wheeling ahead, and those words ringing ringing ringing his ears, growing ever distant. _Worth more than all the gold in Erebor…_

I t was hard to remember why he left it behind, or why he must go. He wanted to reach out and touch Bilbo’s face before those threatening tears could fall but he could not reach that far with so little strength left. Instead he reached into Bilbo’s coat, brushing warmth. He wished to find the acorn, to show it to Bilbo and remind him. _Plant your trees_ …

“Don’t you dare, Thorin,” Bilbo’s voice cracked as he leaned in, pointing to the sky. 

“The eagles are coming, Thorin, the eagles. Please, just hold on a little longer. Thorin…Thorin?”

The world was dark, all except for Bilbo’s face, a last pale and tear-streaked vision in the night…narrowing…narrowing…

Gone.

 

_He sank into dark water, his body weightless, his limbs numb but for remembered warmth. The weight of it overflowed him, his heart's ever-slowing beat, a cradle of a light that glowed like the sun and it was fulfilling, and he knew even as he sank there was no regret, that he had stood at the edge of the world and looked down from walls of ice to know himself free. He had been blessed to have this one last glimpse of joy and in the end, what more could one such as he ask for?_

_The spark faded from his eyes, as the spark was fading from his heart and he reached out to say it was all right, that all was well and that the one he loved should be happy too to know that he was well. There were no more regrets, and he saw now where once he had been blind._

_How beautiful it was in this place of fading, where time had no meaning, to have had this at all. Words failed him as they too lost their meaning and he reached to show with his hands what his lips could not speak, fumbling blind to draw forth the acorn, his heart laid bare, to show to his beloved. Remember this, he wanted to say, go home and know that we had all of this though it be only a small moment, the rest waited as do all seeds do and there was no difference between the seed and the tree and the broken branch that had saved his life. All were blessings unlooked for, all would define him, and all would be dearly missed and beloved for the time they had._

_A shock raced up his arm, but there was so little left to register it, he felt it only as the last of the light faded from his eyes and he tried to smile, to say that all was well while his beloved pleaded above him as he sank into the depths of those dark waters._

_Hung in the balance_

_Fading down_

_Falling_

 

_Suspended_

 

_Unable_

 

_to_

 

 

 

 

_Die._

 

* * *

 

Bilbo would leave in the morning. 

That was the plan, even if part of him wanted to start running now, had wanted to run the minute Thorin’s hand went slack in his. As if he could simply stay ahead of the reality by running fast enough home, back to his books and his armchair and his garden, as Thorin would have wanted. 

Yet Gandalf had urged him to wait one night, to have a wash and a hot meal. To find his bedroll for the night and pack what belongings he wished to bring home. The others had urged him to stay longer, at least until Fili and Kili healed from from their injuries, and he knew he should, knew except…

They were going to bury him. 

It was impossible, the thought, a blank wall Bilbo stared at in his mind, trying and failing to divine its meaning. Thorin, so vital in Bag End, in battle, in Lake-town, and even in his madness when he had stormed and raged. Impossible that that light should ever go out, that he would not wake even though Bilbo clutched at him and pleaded and pleaded…

Bilbo stumbled from his bedroll, still where he had left it when they made their camp just outside the treasury. The rest of the halls were filled with the wounded and dying dwarves of the Iron Hills who took shelter amidst the decay of Erebor. Unbearable to think of seeing any of them, of having to explain himself, and so Bilbo slipped on his ring. 

The shadow world greeted him, the darkness of the mountain halls replaced with smoke, and twisting gray. In the dense fog, he could barely make out the forms of those dwarves who still wandered awake, and skirt past them. He moved deeper into the heart of the city, to the vigil room, the great stone statues looming above and above. And Thorin, lying still upon the sarcophagus lid. 

The room was dark, candle wicks burned low in the night, a hazy glow in the spectral world of his ring. He would have taken it off to see Thorin clearly, but there were guards at the end of the long corridor behind him, and the warmth of the little gold band was a comfort of its own, shrouding him as if in a cocoon against the grating ache and the very real part of him that did _not_ want to see Thorin more clearly. Easier this way: to pretend that Thorin had been wounded at the top of the world, surrounded by ice and the sound of Bilbo’s keening, when he had looked away rather than see those features settle in death, eyes unblinking. 

Bilbo stumbled at the thought, and the ache that choked him welling at the back of his throat, and he had to stop a few feet from the sarcophagus just to _breathe_. 

They had folded Thorin’s hands over his chest, the rings of his house glinting on his hands like a spark of blue fire in the shadow world. The glow of the gems hovered there, casting a ghostly sapphire light over his face, darkening the hollows of his eyes like a skull, a thoroughly horrible image that Bilbo flinched from. Thorin was so still, and death so recent, that it was possible to believe there might be something there. Just the faintest spark that made the dark blood at his shoulder ooze one drop at a time, each beat of his heart distant enought that they were minutes apart. Undetectable. 

They had put the crown back on his head. Bilbo focused on that, rather than the fanciful notions that spread through him, as if originating at the ring on his finger. Bilbo had not seen, but he had heard from Dwalin of how Thorin had cast the crown away. How he had been only a dwarf of Durin’s Folk when he charged out the gate upon the ringing of the great golden bell. 

Thorin would probably hate to see it back, stubborn as he was, and Bilbo was filled with the absurd desire to steal it away. For as he was, Thorin looked like one of the great kings of old, those Men of darkness who had wallowed in evil as they served a master none now could name, and who existed now only in the bedtime stories of naughty children. 

The thought filled him with a strange, creeping dread, but no, he had stolen enough heirlooms of Thorin’s family already. The Arkenstone would be returned to Thorin’s body tomorrow, buried out of the light where Bilbo uncharitably thought it belonged. Thorin might not have wanted the crown, but his people believed that he deserved it, and Bilbo knew that Thorin would accept that if nothing else.

But it did not do to dwell on such idle fancies, and tomorrow there would be no more time. They would bury him, closing the sarcophagus lid with him inside and all his family and friends in attendance, dwarves Bilbo hadn’t known existed despite all the two of them had shared. It would be their time, not his, while this was his, and his alone. 

“Hallo, Thorin,” Bilbo said, and was quite proud of himself that his voice did not crack, He stood at the side of the sarcophagus and when his vision blurred that image came back, that there was a flicker of life within. “I imagine you thought I’d be gone by now. You’re always thinking I’ll run off as soon as I can. Ha. Haha, quite a joke, hmm? And here I am, sticking by just a little longer…”

He cleared his throat. It had grown so choked his last words had been little more than a whisper. 

“But I will leave, tomorrow morning after the funeral. Before the wake. It’ll be too loud for me, I’m sure, a boisterous affair and not really my style. No, I much prefer a dinner party with a few friends, the Company for example. I don’t really know any of those chaps from the Iron Hills anyway.” He paused. “But you did. You had a whole life, a whole family that I knew nothing about. How could you be so stupid as to throw that away, Thorin? How could you…?” He cleared his throat, trying to ease the tightness choking off his breath. “Right, not really fair to you. And I don’t think you’re stupid. Goodness knows, I never would have dared speak such words in front of you, called you names, but you know I wasn’t afraid. You might not believe it, but I know you did all of this out of courage, and honor, and all those other… wonderful things from the storybooks.”

He took a breath, squared his shoulders, and wiped a surreptitious hand over his eyes, as if anyone was there to see it, and it came away damp. “Anyway, I am going home tomorrow. Just like you asked. I miss it, of course, but it’s rather strange. You know, I had stopped thinking about it almost entirely, hadn’t really expected to… to go back at all. But you’re right, it’s the best thing for me. It’s where I belong, now.”

Bilbo swung his arms, hunting for something else to say to fill that impenetrable silence. 

“No one really told you what you meant to us, did they? I think there was a great deal of talk about your grandfather, and the inheritance he left you and how you meant to fulfill it. But we were always so busy, with the quest, and I don’t think any of us thought that… that we’d never have the chance. That you might leave us thinking that we only saw you as a king, our leader taking us from one peril to the next, and I want you to know I never really thought of it like that. To me you were… to me you were…” Bilbo swallowed. “Someone quite magnificent, so much more than this room, or even this mountain and you don’t deserve, you didn’t deserve to have that be all you were. You didn’t deserve any of this, and I…”

“I wish you had come home with me.” And finally Bilbo’s voice cracked, and the words left him in a torrent, here alone with none to hear except Thorin’s body and all the memories that lay between them. “To help me plant the acorn yourself and maybe… get away from this place that was hurting you so. It’s beautiful. I know why you love it, but it was killing you to be here, Thorin, it was eating you alive. It was beautiful and terrible and I hated it. I wanted to take you out by the hand, and walk you away from here. All the way to Bag End if I had to, if that would bring you back. If anything would bring you back I think… I think I would do it.” 

Compulsively, Bilbo reached out, his hand closed around Thorin’s and he nearly jerked back immediately at the cold of his flesh, deeper than that of the room, like touching frozen steel. Metal brushed metal as he shifted, his ring scraping across the great sapphire Thorin had worn on his third finger ever since they entered Erebor, the one that Gandalf said belonged to his father. Instead he held tighter, one clacking against another, and fancied he felt a spark of warmth between them as he dared this one last touch.

There was nothing else to say, and too much to say, and he had spoken enough to an empty room filled with ghosts. Best to keep it brief. 

“Farewell, Thorin Oakenshield, may your memory never fade,” he choked out, and with that Bilbo bent forward and placed a kiss to Thorin’s icy brow, clenching his eyes shut against the image that it would be their last.

 

* * *

 

Bilbo made his way back to the bedroll, the one that had not shifted since they first took up residence within the mountain, and if Thorin’s was there next to it, unslept in for all the days before the battle, he had not spoken up to let the others know. Now sleep weighed upon his eyes like heavy iron and he gave in to it, fingers clenching around a bedroll that was not his own. 

As such, he missed a moment, _a pulse_ within his pocket, as that of an enemy long sundered from another calling out in challenge.

_Come find me_.

And something stirred.

 

* * *

“Are you sure you do not wish to stay for the festivities? My business can wait another day,” Gandalf said with no little concern as Bilbo mounted the hill, on the path to Dale, and Company at the doors of Erebor dropped from sight. He found a shaggy pony waiting for him, and with some relief deposited those souvenirs the dwarves would not allow him to leave without over its back.

Bilbo blinked as if coming out of a daze, and looked at Gandalf. A blank smile came readily to his face as he shook his head. “Oh, I’m afraid I’m not very good company right now. It’s probably for the best that I leave them to it.”

“Bilbo…” Gandalf said, as if prepared to admonish him, but Bilbo shook his head, forcing the smile remain fixed until he thought his jaw would crack. 

“Come now, we have the light, the road is long. Why don’t we get started?” Bilbo mounted his pony with far more grace than he had ever possessed leaving Bag End, but before he could cluck her forward Gandalf seized his reins, holding them and giving Bilbo a look, the lines of his face deepened with concern. 

Bilbo looked away. “Please, Gandalf,” he whispered “Let me go home.” 

Silence fell, one in which Bilbo thought Gandalf would urge him back, or speak some platitude that would draw him out, and force him to speak to what had come before, what he could not think of right now if he were to leave this place without crumpling. He had resolved to put iron in his spine, and it would rust if he gave in now to tears. There had been enough of those. 

“Very well then,” Gandalf said, and released the reins, but did not take his eyes from Bilbo as they urged their mounts onward, leaving Erebor and all its ghosts behind them. 

* * *

_To understand what happened that day,_ Bilbo would later write _, may be forever impossible. To say it began in Bag End was not to go back far enough. It began long before that, thousands of years before._

When the smoke cleared his eyes and no longer stung his throat, when he no longer leapt at the smell of burning, when the tears dried: then he and Gandalf spent long hours talking when finally the ancient being explained all. 

_It began with the forging of the great rings._

A spirit, a… shadow of such terrible power that his mind boggled to think of it, had leant his aid forging gifts for each of the races. 

_Elves, Men, and Dwarves, each with powers that spoke to the desires of each. The elves jealously guarded the making of their rings, but even they could not escape his lessons and into their rings they imbued their own timelessness. All that fell within the scope of their power would remain as untouched by the passing years as they._

_The rings of Men granted dominion, the power to overwhelm the minds of lesser beings and demand their loyalty. A scattered and fragmented people, what Man had not wished for the power to unify with a word?_

And the dwarves _…_

_The dwarves desired treasure, or so the legends said._

He had seen the love of gold in Thorin’s eyes, but flinched to hear it so bluntly stated. No, he wanted to say, no it is not that simple _._

_They desired beauty in a world made ugly by the shadow. Gold and gems were merely one form, but the most eternal, and there was beauty too in what could not be touched by death in a dying world._

_Yes_ , Gandalf would say gravely, _but Sauron saw that love and twisted it to something terrible._

_Sauron, as the spirit was called, connected to the rings of dwarves and Men with far stronger bonds than those of elves. When his power waxed, so too did the power of the rings, as well as their influence. The King of each of the Seven Dwarven Clans bore a ring of power, and each saw wealth spread and multiply beneath their hands as if by magic. And as the wealth spread, the love of beauty shrank, and greed replaced it._

_The dragon sickness of Thorin’s family, not a sickness at all, but tied to the power of that spirit and his connection over the bond through the line of Durin’s ring of power. Passed from father to son, it resembled nothing less than a hereditary illness, and with the presence of the rings such a tightly guarded secret from the other races, none thought to question it._

Four destroyed, three remaining, and nothing to excuse Thorin’s madness save the fear in his eyes at the thought of it, knowing not from whence this cancer grew in his mind. Bilbo would reflect on this bitterly, at the arrogance of the wise, so quick to see madness where there was malice, and at the foolish, who could not see the danger until it was too late. 

_When Dol Guldur fell, and the One Ring called out for its brethren._


	3. Dark and Deep

It was cold upon the road. 

Winter arrived sooner in the north, the wind howling over the great sweeping plains that surrounded Erebor, before they were overtaken by the forest of Mirkwood. It was faster travel by a pony than it had been on foot, less anxious than the precarious barge ride. The morning frost crunched under the hooves of their mounts, Gandalf just ahead on his chestnut mare, while Bilbo trailed behind. The night before had brought him little rest, and his eyes remained unfocused as he looked at the back of his pony’s neck. His hands were numb upon the reins, so it was very good thing that it was such a biddable creature and followed Gandalf without any prompting. Bilbo would have likely wandered into the lake on his own.

_— do not fret Master Baggins, we are making excellent time_ —

Bilbo flinched, shutting his eyes against the desolation, the old tracks of their journey to the Mountain, the ruins of Lake-town a smoldering heap crouched low on the water under a gray winter sky. A day of riding and Erebor still loomed large behind them. He wondered if they would ever escape its shadow. 

_“What will you do, Thorin, if the door does not open?” Bilbo said, finally voicing the thought that had been on his mind since they escaped Thranduil’s dungeon and saw Erebor clawing at the sky in the distance._

_Thorin started, looking back from where he had been glowering out the window, their room in the Master’s manor unfortunately facing the mountain. It seemed to wait for them, casting its shadow and something… strange, had fallen over Thorin since that very first glance from the smuggler’s barge. Thorin fiddled with the dwarven ring hanging from his neck more often, and it made Bilbo itch to bring out his own._

_Yet still Thorin did not wear it, could not, the weight alone had dragged him to the ground in Mirkwood when he last tried, nearly broken his arm, and he hadn’t made another attempt since. The blue stone winked between his fingers, then vanished as he slid it back behind his shirt, and turned to face Bilbo._

_“Second thoughts, burglar?” Thorin said, with a trace of his old humor, so rarely seen but there for anyone who knew how to look for it like the glimpse of an underground stream._

_“Only realistic ones, something we’ve had in rather short supply on this journey. It’s been quite a long time, hasn’t it? We don’t know if the door is still there, or if there’s been a cave in, really anything could have happened…” Bilbo trailed off as Thorin’s expression tightened with each word._

_“Then I will have failed, and worse, dragged my kin halfway around the world to do so. Is that what you want to hear?” Thorin said._

_“Not… exactly,” Bilbo said._

_“Then why bring it up at all?” Thorin demanded._

_Bilbo threw his hands up. “I’m not trying to be a spoilsport. I only worry for you.”_

_“For me, or for your fourteenth share?” Thorin snapped, and Bilbo’s eyebrows shot up._

_“What a question! I’m not sure you recall, Thorin, but I lived quite comfortably in the Shire, and have the income to continue doing so the rest of my days. That’s why I worry for you, yes,_ you _. Your armor was quite fine when you arrived on my doorstep, but I know little else of your life. If Erebor is truly beyond our reach, as we will certainly find out one way or the other tomorrow, will you be alright?”_

_Thorin stared, and a long and painful silence stretched before he looked away. “No, but not for reasons of mere comfort.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I cannot worry what will happen if we fail, Bilbo. If I dared entertain such fears I would not have made it this far. They are a luxury I cannot afford.”_

_“Oh,” was all Bilbo could say, his stomach falling at the look of agony that had flickered over Thorin’s face at the question. So that was the source of that indomitable will and stubbornness? Just not daring to think, or to even entertain the possibility that they could fail? If so, perhaps that was the source of driven resolve that seemed to allow him to walk on air as if it were stone. And perhaps it was all that was keeping Thorin upright. Bilbo stepped closer, and placed a hand on Thorin’s arm. “I only wondered because… you do know you could come live with me after?”_

_Thorin reared back, staring at Bilbo as if he did not know him, throat working before he said harshly, “Why would I do that?”_

_Bilbo huffed, trying to work past the sharp stab in his chest at those words. “I’m not an idiot, Thorin. There’s only twelve other dwarves and one rather useless hobbit with you on this quest, and Smaug defeated a thousand times that many warriors when he attacked your city. Dwalin mentioned a meeting of your kin to decide if they would help you, and from the looks of it none of them did. You’re very proud, and you take everything on your shoulders, so I shudder to think what would happen if we were unable to get in for reasons_ entirely _outside your control. After that, I imagine the idea of going back to face your kin is hardly a pleasant one. Why not… why not come stay with me for a while? If the worst happens, that is, and I’m not saying it will, but if it did… you would have a home in Bag End. I have far too many empty bedrooms anyway.”_

_Bilbo suddenly remembered standing in the square, when he vouched for Thorin’s honor, because the look the dwarf was giving him now was equally still to the point of unsettling. Frankly, he should have expected what came next when he was crushed against Thorin’s chest in another of those inexplicable displays of dwarven emotion. Only they were quite a bit closer than they had been that time on the Carrock, so with that embrace came the warm brush of lips on Bilbo’s forehead._

_“Thank you,” Thorin said roughly, and when he pulled away he cleared his throat. “It won’t be necessary, but… I thank you.”_

_“But if it is?” Bilbo pressed._

_“I cannot think like that,” Thorin repeated, but before Bilbo could protest further and thus begin another back-and-forth of what ifs, his heart sank as he heard Thorin whisper, “I wish I could.”_

* * *

It was almost insulting how easy it was to get through the Greenwood a second time, with safe passage, and ponies, and with the Elvenking’s court as a destination rather than a prison. Bilbo wished he could hate Thranduil for what had happened, except that he could not. Elves still held their enchantment for him, though he could all but hear Thorin’s voice at the back of his head scoffing, reminding him of the terrible battle and the indignities his people had suffered.

But the elves were kind to Bilbo, and always they had been beautiful, this time in a way that made his heart not ache quite so terribly. They sang as they wandered their halls, and that night there was a feast filled with the twittering, joyful laughter of Thranduil’s people. The stars shone above, visible through the interwoven canopy of roots of this strange palace that lingered between the earth and the sky. Gandalf seemed to know everyone there, and he spoke in Sindarin that Bilbo could follow quite well, though he was less sure of his pronunciation and so stayed mostly silent. 

It was only after nearly half a bottle of wine, his glass never allowed to go fully empty, that the elven voices faded from Bilbo’s ears and his gaze wandered. Elves with red and brown hair, dotted with the occasional pale white as bright as the king’s, caught his eye, but none of them were black or streaked with gray. 

There was no gray hair here, no signs of age or death. It never came to this elven wood, and suddenly Bilbo could not breathe, he could not speak or make polite conversation or listen to their songs. He rose to his feet before the room’s spinning could grow any worse, excusing himself with some muttered gasp, staggering out into the hall. None but Gandalf seemed to notice his passing, and the wizard did nothing to stop him. 

The little gold ring was heavy in Bilbo’s pocket, and he wondered if he should put it on, just once for old times’ sake. His feet carried him without his thoughts to guide them and he wandered lower and lower. The occasional elf passed him with a cask of wine, which is how he knew he was going the right way when he arrived at the dungeons and found the correct door, though it was empty. Bilbo pressed his forehead to the bars, clasping the cold metal tight with his fingers. 

_It felt like hours, but it was in truth days before Bilbo could find a way out for the Company. Long, exhausting days of scouring the palace, of creeping beneath the eyes of the guards whom he was certain could see him, for surely his little ring could not be so powerful as to subvert an elven gaze. He stole food where he could and ate in frantic bites in the pantry so no one would question stray crumbs scattered through the halls._

_At night he slept outside Thorin’s cell. It might have been safer to sleep elsewhere, find a hidden hole to make his bed where none could find him. It certainly wasn’t prudent to sleep in the path of the guardsmen as they did their rounds, and it meant wearing his ring through the night, which always left him feeling uncomfortable and worn the next day, haunted by dark dreams._

_But only there could he sleep with Thorin’s fingers wrapped through his the whole night through, warm and larger than his, their touches still unspoken and unexplained. Invisible, they did not need to explain to the others, or suffer knowing looks. As if the very act of observation would change what existed between them, force them to remember that they were a fish and a bird with no common home where they could know peace together, that nothing in their life was similar, and nothing made any sense at all. That Bilbo was here at all did not fit in the trajectory of the life he was surely meant for, and that Thorin existed for him outside of one of his books felt like a gift he was never meant to receive. And yet, that day Thorin had said very much the same thing about Bilbo._

_“Tomorrow I will offer my life in exchange for the Company,” Thorin said in a matter of fact tone, in that way only he could where grand gestures that only made sense in fairytales somehow sounded completely acceptable, even rational._

_“I won’t hear such talk. I’ll get us out of here, just you wait,” Bilbo had said, his jaw cracking around a huge yawn, his hands tightened around Thorin’s through the bars. They spoke in hushed whispers while the rest of the company slept, he could hear their snores rattling through the caverns._

_Thorin nodded. He no longer questioned Bilbo’s claims, impossible as they must sound, but nor did he seem to believe it. “If Thranduil accepts my offer, you must go with the Company. They will need you more than I.”_

_At that, Bilbo went quiet. Splitting the Company, no, no that couldn’t possibly be right. The thought of Thorin alone in the dark, in the hall of his enemy with nothing but his thoughts… He could not yet put to words why, but he knew that there was little that could be worse for Thorin than being so alone, cut off from his kin in a place of darkness._

_“Will they, Thorin?” he said, and in that close space the name spoken aloud was more intimate than he ever intended, and yet he would not take it back. It was only practical to ask, he reminded himself. If the others were set free he could certainly scamper after them, but no one but he could stay behind with Thorin, and talk to him as they did now, and perhaps find a way out because one dwarf would be far easier to smuggle than thirteen. “Will they really need me more?”_

_Thorin shifted and looked away. “…I do not like that trinket you carry. How it makes you invisible, for all its use here in keeping you free. When you are hidden, I’m not sure you are real,” Thorin murmured. “I wonder if I have gone mad, and speak only to the air. But then, sometimes when I can see you I wonder the same. There is no place in our legends for an outsider. It has been an Age since any have offered my people aid without it being in their own interest. It has been an Age since any have cared. I wonder if perhaps I dreamt you up.”_

_Bilbo tried to crack a smile, but his voice was thin and reedy in his ears. “Since when were any of your dreams hobbit-shaped? I rather thought they looked like mountains.”_

_Thorin smiled faintly. “Many are, but this one is far more pleasant. That there could be someone, anyone at all, outside of my kin who cared if we lived or died. That is a gift I never thought to receive.”_

_Bilbo’s throat tightened, because it was another of those painful, and sincere, and painfully sincere things Thorin said at times. It was almost worse now that these days those words weren’t about what a nuisance he was. Bilbo wasn’t quite sure he knew how to handle being the focus of such intensity, except to try to offer something in return, “But I do.”_

_“I know. Which is why you must understand if sometimes I wonder if you are real.”_

It was good, seeing the cells again, the scuff marks from where the dwarves had tried to dig their way free with their metal spoons, until the elves had replaced them with wooden ones. It was good to remember that it was all real, and he had been here with thirteen dwarves, in the Company of Thorin Oakenshield. That they had journeyed to take back their mountain, and they _had_ taken it. That the dwarves had a home again, at least the ones that survived. It was good to remember that it happened, and that he had a part in it.

It was good to remember that Thorin had once lived. 

* * *

_He saw the light as if from deep underwater, wavering and too far to reach against a canopy of black. He took a step toward it, heavy and shuddering as if his body was already stone._

—awaiting the remaking of the world—

_He raised a hand, and it hid the light from view, streaming through the cracks between his fingers, going out when he closed his hand. Too far to reach. He walked forward. The dark closed around him._

* * *

 When they found Bilbo, asleep the next morning, it was down in the cells, body curled into a ball and pressed to the outside of the bars. His hand had fallen between the bars, and clenched empty on the other side, as if holding another’s hand.

“I can’t imagine what happened, I must have gotten lost and fallen asleep at the first possible opportunity. Elvish wine, eh?” Bilbo said lightly.


	4. Splendor Veiled

_The madness had not been complete. There were stretches where the spell fell from his eyes, and Thorin would stand, lost and overwhelmed in the middle of the treasury, not knowing how he arrived there. In those moments, the bewilderment of the treasure would fall from his eyes and all he could see was the sickly yellow glow emanating from the gold like a miasma, and himself a shriveled, pathetic creature crouched at its center, a willing slave._

_Fur and armor hung heavy from his shoulders, dragging him down, and the ring on his hand… He did not remember putting it on, but it must have been when he entered the mountain, when he had looked out over the treasure hoard of his grandfather and known he was now king. Then, and only then, had the dwarven ring of power finally accepted him as its lord. That was before the dragon returned, before he had raised his sword to Bilbo’s chest_. _Just thinking of that moment, when he had seen his lover as a grasping shadow, an enemy, seemed to double the weight of his ring and he shuddered and stumbled, and looked wildly about the room. What had happened after that? What had he done to Bilbo, to his kin?_

_If he could just call to the others, if he could just warn them… Not to listen to what he said, to take the crown from his head and the lordship from his hand before he brought ruin to them all._

_“Thorin?” He started, Bilbo at his elbow, blessedly alive, and the hobbit reaching up to press his hand to Thorin’s face without fear, so whatever he had wrought in the haze could not have been so terrible. His own skin was cold and slick with sweat from the heavy furs. It was hard to breathe.“Thorin, are you alright? You look faint, are you sure you won’t eat something? Please?” Bilbo trailed off, and their eyes met._

_“Bilbo…” Thorin said, eyes focusing on the hobbit. “Have I… am I going mad?”_

_He felt the hobbit go still, the word they never spoke hanging between them, and in Bilbo’s hesitation he saw the truth. Could feel the madness pressing against his mind with the weight of the crown. “Tell me.”_

_“I…you have not been well, Thorin,” Bilbo said. “You barely eat or drink, you haven’t slept for days. I think we should leave the Mountain, something is not right here.”_

_Thorin frowned, feeling a throb in his skull at those words, pushing them back. “No. No I cannot do that. It would leave me if I did.” He held up his hand, the sapphire winking in the yellow light, flashing green and for the first time he saw the flesh around the band was mangled, darkened with scabs as if he had scoured the skin with his nails, trying to tear it off. But he would never do that._

_Bilbo’s gaze drifted down, eyebrows rising in alarm at the sight of Thorin’s hand. “Just for a little while then, hmm? Not forever. Just until you’ve had some rest.”_

_He moved gently, taking Thorin’s wrist, and Thorin could feel the tremor that ran through the hobbit.Was it fear? Was Bilbo afraid of him now, and if so why, if Thorin had not harmed him? Was it theft? The shadows of the room darkened and Thorin’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Bilbo. The Arkenstone gone, the symbol of his kingship, and now Bilbo wanted him to leave the Mountain?_

_Thorin gasped, shuddering from head to toe, wheezing out, “You must flee. Flee this place, before it finds you too.”_

_The fear flickered on Bilbo’s face, giving way to a tight, rueful smile. “You know I can’t do that.”_

_“Please, I…” Thorin said and felt a flicker of himself, his old self, a last spark as the shadows closed tighter. He knew there was something he should do, some warning he should give but the words made no sense, none of it made any sense except that he knew they sought to steal from him, that_ they _wanted what he had. He would have to keep searching if he was to take it back._

_There was warmth on his lips, soft hands on his face pulling him down but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered except the will of the king, the will of the blue sapphire on his hand, and the loss of the Arkenstone._

_His black cloak dragged across the coins as he drifted away, disentangling from Bilbo’s embrace without seeing him, eyes blank to all but the gold._

* * *

_That day, Bilbo followed and reminded himself that this was no time for tears, that soon a solution would present itself, if he could just keep the stone from Thorin until then. Tried not to think that that might have been his last chance, the last drop of clarity before the abyss._

_It did not bear thinking about even long after, when he realized it was true._

* * *

* * *

The guards discovered the broken sarcophagus in the morning, at the changing of the watch, along with two dead dwarves by the door. The stone was blackened and riven to its core, as if cut through with a burning blade.

The clamor began at once, ringing out like falling hammers, alarm bells ringing out along with cries of the dwarves through the caverns of Erebor.

The body of the king was gone.

* * *

He sat on a hill where the first broken stone of desolation gave way to wild grasses, close-cropped and yellow with sickness, bowed low by the wind yet ever striving upward. His head was in his hands, the right pulsing with the sluggish flow of blood, surging acid in his veins. The sapphire did not glint in the high and distant sun, shrouded by a veil of silver clouds, shading it to black. The breath in his lungs rattled cold and slow.

He felt the pull westward, the only clear thought in the ruins of a mind, behind eyes that squinted in pain against the thin and fading light. He lived, but what was living? Propped up as a puppet by the pulse of pain in his hand, led forward though the life within was so faint and faded as to be snuffed out with a single breath. Malevolence in the gem on his hand nursed him through injuries that should have meant death, for that malevolence had no power to create life, only to twist it. As it had twisted this life, whipping it onward for its own purpose.

He moaned into his hands as a spasm shuddered through him, wounds straining even as the dark power knit them together with each sluggish surge of blood and shallow breath. A ghost in a grinding machine. He pushed himself to his feet, or rather was pulled upward against what will he had. His head came up like a tracking hound following a scent, forced forward by the whip of a master without promise of reward except for an easing of his pain, some cessation of the longing it had forced into his breast. 

In the chaos of his mind he thought of resistance, as instinctive as breathing, but the thought was like a distant star appearing briefly behind a wall of black clouds, quickly swallowed. He could not be forced by pain alone, no child of the stone could be, and so it reached within and drew out a memory, a flash of warmth, of gold. 

_There. It is before you, now find it. Bring it to me._

He stepped forward, tread heavy on hard ground, body as solid as the bones of the earth, each breath a shred of life returning. Time bringing back strength, each step bringing it closer to his master’s goal. The forces striving within twisting it, turning him to a new purpose. Overcoming will. Overcoming the grave. It ordered, and as a being of pain, on the very razor’s edge of death, he obeyed.

* * *

Winter deepened and the cold air licked at Bilbo’s ankles, for his feet felt no cold at all. He huddled beneath his cloak as it stung his cheeks, eyes dull as he watched the sway of Gandalf’s back farther ahead, his pony finding its own head and following. Both their figures were stooped in the saddle, fighting the cold, but in a way it was a blessing. The discomfort and the shriek of the wind were almost enough to force out memory.

“Only a few hours more,” Gandalf called back over his shoulder, the first they had spoken since they set out that morning. They hardly spoke at all these days, now their third on the road since entering the passes of the Misty Mountains, sleeping on hard ground, not daring to build a fire lest it draw out the few goblins that remained. 

Bilbo thought of when last he had traveled there, how fear had hovered ever-present beneath the cold and discomfort. How fearless the dwarves had seemed to him in contrast, though now he knew better. Knew how it had not been hatred but guilt that made Thorin snap that Bilbo did not belong on their journey. After all they had been through it was strange to think how long they had been together but never really spoke, all those missed chances.

It should have been thoughts of the battle that made him weep, but to his horror, Bilbo felt tears trickling down his face at the thought of what could have been. Maybe if he had said something in Rivendell, when they overheard Lord Elrond speaking of the madness of Thorin’s line. Or before that, on one of the many nights by the fire, had he ever thought to ask after the company’s leader, or share a pipe, or even offer him a smile? 

Bilbo gritted his teeth, his whole body hardened and seized up against the sudden paroxysms of grief. Mortifying to be crying again out in the open where Gandalf could see if he only looked over his shoulder, instead of the small, dark closet where he had holed up to weep over his mother, or in the crypt alone with Thorin’s body, or upon the ice at the top of the world with only the dead around him. He had thought the funeral would be the last time he wept in front of others. He had not even cried when he said goodbye to his companions. He was sick to death of weeping.

Bilbo pulled his hood down lower and waited for the tears to dry, and wished for his handkerchief, and his home, and to be properly alone with the ghosts he brought back with him. The pony swayed, and little by little his teeth unclenched and Bilbo took a deep breath.

* * *

That night, the fire burned low, inviting back the cold that could only be briefly banished. Gandalf and Bilbo had made some polite conversation over their evening meal, the blank and meaningless words coming easily to Bilbo’s lips. The trials of the road, the relative quality of the food, the longing for a proper bed, all topics that had slotted easily under polite conversation as demanded by hobbit custom, though surely his relatives at home would be horrified at the thought of such topics as how to get warg blood stains out of one’s coat. Bilbo had offered to take first watch, and Gandalf now slept in his odd way, eyes open like an elf, staff curled in his arm, and only the deep even fall of his breath to mark the moment when he slipped into whatever passed for rest with wizards.

Night fell early at this time of year, in this part of the world, and anyway Bilbo was not tired. He prodded the fire until it sparked with weary life, spreading to the as-yet unblackened log, and sending a flicker of warmth over his face. Red light glinted on the ground before him, and on his golden ring when he pulled it from his pocket. 

An urge whispered through him, like a voice at the back of his mind: _toss it into the fire_. 

Bilbo’s fingers clenched around it, the thought queer in his head. Why destroy something that had brought them such good fortune? But behind that still was another thought, a flicker of anger and he knew as soon as he wondered. Good fortune, yes, without it he might not have escaped that Gollum-creature in the tunnels. He might not have earned such acclaim from Thorin and the company, breaking them free of Thranduil’s dungeons, hiding from Smaug long enough to play riddle games with him. 

Without it the dwarves might have remained prisoners. Who knew how long, a few months, even years? They would surely have missed Durin’s Day and that alone would have left them furious, miserable, and demoralized. They might never have had another chance. 

But Thorin would be alive. No doubt fallen into a black depression, given new reasons to rage against elves. But Smaug would have slept on, harming no one, and elves were not cruel. They would have let the dwarves go eventually, of that Bilbo was sure. They could have gone home then. Bilbo could have brought Thorin back to Bag End with him, to spare him the judgement of his kin that he had gone so far only to fail. Thorin would have wanted to try again years later, but until that time they would have lived together, they would have…

The metal of the ring cut into Bilbo’s hand as he clenched his fingers around it and he took a shuddering breath.

Had Thranduil known? They said the oldest and greatest of elves had powers beyond mortal ken. Had he seen some future, oh, perhaps caring nothing if Thorin died, but knowing that disaster and calamity would follow were he to fulfill his quest? Perhaps in his cold way he was being kind, seeing further than any of these brief mortals could. Perhaps Bilbo should have trusted to the wisdom of elves as he once had. Instead he had been swept up, by fire, and purpose, and the longing in Thorin’s voice and in his eyes when he spoke of home. 

Bilbo unclenched his hand, let the ring lay flat on his palm, traced its perfect golden edge with his fingers. It was warm, comforting in his hand and for just a little while he didn’t want to exist, didn’t want to face how easily all of this could have been avoided, how it all could have been different.

Bilbo slipped the ring onto his finger.

Immediately he found himself in the swirling gray mists of the shadow world. There, the fire was only a sullen, muted glow crouched upon the earth. His hands were pale and misty, the wind whipping at them so his very life force seemed to be dragged from his body, peeled away from him in wisps of fog. Perhaps that was how it made him invisible, by stealing a little more of his life from him every time he wore it.

Bilbo looked up, shaking himself free of such dark musings and glanced over at Gandalf’s sleeping form. Except Gandalf was not there, and Bilbo’s eyes widened.

A glowing statue of pale marble shone where the wizard should be, young features smooth and genderless, only vaguely matching Gandalf’s wizened face. Its body shone as if carved from light, as if the moon himself had taken his rest upon the earth. The staff in Gandalf’s arms glinted like silver glass in the shadow world, and on his hand burned a spark of fire, like the brightest ember at the heart of a flame, red as blood.

_Bilbo…_

His name echoed on the wind, calling him, and Bilbo turned, looking East to the source of that voice. Without thinking, he reached out his hand, the hand that bore his ring.

_Wait for me._

The voice was both frightening and painful at once, and yet there was a second that struck in his breast a longing he could not name. There was something familiar in that voice…

A hand closed around Bilbo’s shoulder.

With a gasp, he wrenched off the ring, and stared up into Gandalf’s face. Blue eyes, surrounded by familiar wrinkles, with nothing to give away the marble statue, the youth of unspeakable beauty that he had seen inside the ring’s shadowy world. Yet whatever Bilbo might have said on the matter was swallowed by the fear in Gandalf’s eyes.

“We are being hunted.”

Bilbo blinked. “You could see me?” he said, stupefied, and still too befuddled by the sudden return to n the normal world to comprehend Gandalf’s words.

“Your shadow was cast upon the ground. Have a care when using that ring, Bilbo Baggins, it is not a child’s toy. But it is no matter, in fact it may be all that protects you. We must flee this place. Quickly.”

“But it’s the middle of the night!”

“And that is the time when the enemy’s servants may travel most swiftly. They will be upon us soon, we have no choice but to flee.” Without another word, Gandalf began to gather their packs, stuffing loose clothing back inside the leather satchel, rolling up their bedrolls while Bilbo hovered at his shoulder, bobbing like a nervous pigeon. 

“I don’t understand. Azog is dead, the orcs put to flight. What could possibly be hunting us?” Bilbo said. Only at this did Gandalf stop his hurried packing, and turn to him. He placed both hands on Bilbo’s shoulders, a soothing gesture, as if to make him be still. 

“This has nothing to do with you, my dear Bilbo,” Gandalf said. “No doubt it is a consequence of the errand that took me from you and the company in the first place. I was naive to think there would be no further attacks, no guard of the enemy sent to pursue us once its master was vanquished. This is an unknown vengeance, but it is my error that it was an unexpected one.”

“Errand? Consequence? Gandalf, what is going on?” Bilbo exclaimed. The haze of the quiet, the ring, and thoughts of before, when all had seemed possible and yet none had come to pass, was thoroughly dashed from his mind as if by a plunge into cold water. Even the memory of the marble form that had glowed where Gandalf should have slept was forgotten in the rush. 

Gandalf shoved Bilbo’s pack into his arms. “I will tell you on the road.”

* * *

Only once their ponies were trotting at a swift clip, the midnight air cold and damp on Bilbo’s skin, and weighing heavily on his eyes with the promise of sleep he had been foolish to ignore, did Gandalf finally explain.

Bilbo’s mind reeled. This talk of Necromancers, of dark towers and darker servants, of an evil thought long dead, was impossible and out of place even in a life that had now known a quest to slay a dragon. He instinctively put a hand over his breast pocket, where he had slipped the ring away, and thought perhaps it was because he wished to simply vanish from the terror that hunted them. His quest was supposed to be done, it seemed dreadfully unfair that Gandalf’s other errands must follow him too.

“It was never my intention that they should do so,” Gandalf said as if reading Bilbo’s mind, and perhaps he could. “Should it draw any closer, I fear we must part ways.”

“Oh, now, hang on a moment,” Bilbo said, temporarily roused from the misery of a late-night ride in winter by a surge of outrage. “Your plan is to leave me utterly defenseless from this great evil of yours?”

“Quite the contrary,” Gandalf said, and there was a kind of sad amusement in his voice. “With your part in this great tale done, I see no reason our foe, whatever it might be, should ever pursue you. When we part ways, Bilbo, it will be to save your life.”

Protests waited on Bilbo’s tongue, yet none could he put into words. Instead he subsided, and looked behind them to the east where in a few hours the sun would rise pink to banish the dark of night, uneasiness heavy in his heart.


	5. Pursuit

He hated the forest, without knowing whence the hatred came, without the words or past or memories to frame it. The creatures that made their home in that tangled wood feared his passing, even the spiders born of an evil greater than any alive, one that once swallowed the light of the world. For he was something new.

Once rich robes fell from a begrimed form, each grueling day of ceaseless march tearing away fur and gems and delicate embroidery until all that was left was armor and black cloth that fell about him like the tattered shreds of night. Dirt was embedded beneath the nails of torn hands, and when the dark of the forest was too much he raised his face to the air and sniffed. He tasted the prey in the air, with a mouth surrounded by parched and cracked lips.

He shuddered from head to toe as he forded the river, feeling the black magics of the waters swirl about him, tearing at his rags, but finding no purchase. For he wore more powerful spells, woven around his flesh like a burial shroud, and the simple bewitchment of water had not the power to cast sleep where death already crouched.

His left arm ached, the flesh was shriveled around a glowing stone on his hand that winked malevolence in the patched light of the forest. The flesh around the gem oozed slow, black blood where he had tried to tear away the source of the pain. There were pale scars beneath the scratches, old ones.

…. _The fog had cleared from his mind. He was surrounded by gold, and the ring_ burned _on his hand. There was so little time, he had to get it off get it off get it_ ** _off_** _…_

He shook his head, eyes rising to the dusky horizon, and continued to walk towards the mountains that rose in the distance. Unlike his prey, he needed no rest.

* * *

The storm caught up to them just as they reached the foothills on the other side of the Misty Mountains. The road had been overshadowed by a sense of unease ever since the night of Gandalf’s alarm, and the warning he gave that he must soon leave Bilbo to travel the rest of the long way to Bag End alone.

They would part ways once they reached the plains. Bilbo would very much like to have dismissed Gandalf’s warnings as no more than baseless fussing to get out of escorting him home, except for one problem:

He could sense it too.

A shadow and a threat, an ache of longing at the back of his mind, or perhaps in his heart. The little ring in his pocket felt heavier every day, and he could not go more than a few minutes without patting the chain that hung beneath his shirt, the cold metal pressed to his skin. He had strung it there after more than one occasion when the ring had almost slipped from his pocket as if jumping of its own will. A fanciful notion.

They were lucky not to have encountered any goblins in the mountains this time. Whatever had happened between the death of the Great Goblin at Gandalf’s hand, and the battle at the doors of Erebor, they had gone deep to ground. It did not mean he and Gandalf risked a shortcut through caves.

That night they made their paltry camp on the far slope, the rain beating against their tent hard enough to drip through. Bilbo huddled beneath his heavy woolen cloak, too cold and miserable to even grouse about their circumstances.

Lightning split the sky, crashing down around them in a flash of white and a deafening rumble of thunder that seemed to go on and on. Bilbo’s accompanying shriek was lost in the cacophony. Beside him, Gandalf barely twitched, his eyes trained on the tent flap while Bilbo huddled and shivered beneath his cloak. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, nothing to be done except to brace oneself and bear it.  Once, he was quite sure he’d have been insensate with terror by now at the thought of being struck by lightning, but the sight of a troll’s maw close up had a way of diminishing such abstract fears. 

He had almost dozed off to sleep, despite the cold and the wet and the threatening rumble of the storm, when Gandalf’s eyes snapped open. “It is here.”

The wizard was on his feet, pushing open the tent flap and racing out into the night in an instant, to their mounts before Bilbo could protest. As it was, he was too cold, too damp and exhausted from their journey to do more than follow Gandalf with his eyes, until the words seeped into his brain like the water soaking through his blanket. Bilbo’s eyes widened, visions of Gandalf vanishing into the darkness rising, as cold in his mind as the rain trickling down his back. He stumbled to his feet, both leaving the tent behind in the rush to their shivering mounts, and from there straight into the teeth of the storm. 

The wind shrieked between the cracks in the mountain and the pellets of rain stung like needles, with little hope of seeing into the deep black of the night drowned in clouds. Bilbo could only see Gandalf because he knew where to look, a gray form almost swallowed by the night if not for the ghostly red glow on his hand. It was not a torch, Bilbo could not properly say _what_ the source of that light was, except that he felt he should not be seeing it. 

“Bilbo, come along, we must hurry,” Gandalf said, his voice somehow rolling above the thunder. His back was turned to Bilbo, as he stared up at the crags above them.

Lightning tore the sky, a white outline around boiling purple clouds, and there was a figure standing above them on the rocks, looking down. 

There comes a point where fear is more swift and sudden than even lightning, filling the heart and body like the flash fills the sky. But Bilbo’s usual shriek at the thunder’s crash was swallowed by paralysis. Their hunter stood above, its black cloak illuminated in the flash, a tattered ruin and a face that was wrapped in cloth like a veil. At such a distance there was no way of telling if it was a goblin, a Man or something far more terrible. Its very presence sucked the last of the heat from the air. 

“Gandalf, what does it want?” Bilbo shouted over the wind, and knew even as he spoke that Gandalf would not know, that he would need to learn this answer for himself. He needed to get closer, to see what it really was…

A hand seized his shoulder and wrenched him back mid step and the sight of Gandalf swallowed his vision as the wizard drew alongside, leaning down from his horse. His lined face dripping from the rain. Something burned on Gandalf’s hand… a ring that Bilbo could have sworn had not been there before. Its light stained the rain on Gandalf’s face the color of blood.

“Run! Down to the plains, I will lead it away!” Gandalf bellowed over the wind and the curious rushing in Bilbo’s ears that did not seem to come from the storm but from the very sight of the figure beyond in its tattered cloak.

Another flash of lightning, further off, and he thought he saw the glint of the creature’s armor. He could not tear his eyes away, could not help squinting through the rain past Gandalf at the figure. Closer now. It was coming to them, but something was wrong. Sometimes between rocks the figure would stop, catch itself. It was limping. A creature in pain, but pushed onward by some inexorable will. Bilbo did not want to run, he wanted to go towards it, to offer what aid he could. Perhaps his ring would soothe it…

“It is a servant of the enemy, it will kill you if it catches you!” Gandalf said, steering Bilbo’s gaze away. “Go!”

There was a flash from the red ring on Gandalf’s hand and it shot through Bilbo’s senses with a spark. Behind the shock came a jolt of pain, like the prick of a needle against his breast where his own ring lay and he urged his pony away, driving his heels into its flanks. The pony squealed and shot forward, with Bilbo desperately holding on to his neck, his own cries swallowed by the storm.

* * *

Freezing, soaked to the skin and nearly insensate from exhaustion and cold, Bilbo squinted as the sun breached gold above the horizon with the coming dawn, the sky clear of the storm that had raged through the night.

The pony had run for hours, and Bilbo could do nothing but tuck his head down and let it have its head. He could see no better than the poor creature anyway and had simply hung on for dear life as it ran, trying desperately not to fall. As the sun rose, it revealed a plain of long golden grasses. All was quiet but for the cries of birds that woke now to begin their day. And he was alone. 

His pack was soaked through, and Bilbo resigned himself to a soggy breakfast as soon as his hands stopped shaking long enough for him to dare slip from the pony’s back. He led it by the reins to one of the larger boulders, where the ground looked relatively dry beneath it.

The day felt as vast and new as the dawning of the world, and in the vague way one thinks when exhaustion and emotion and terror have flooded one so full that once it’s washed out again there is nothing to feel but emptiness. Bilbo realized this was his first time he had been truly alone without another soul in sight for as long as he could remember. Even in the halls of Erebor there had been the distant clamor of dwarves. On the road there was Gandalf. Running to the camp in Dale to hand over the Arkenstone there had been distant torchlight to not feel so alone, and Bofur’s eyes behind him watching him go. In the crypt where he had said goodbye he had not been alone truly because Thorin—

Well, right now the pony didn’t count. It could hardly hold a conversation. And more to the point, Bilbo did not know where he was. Somewhere nearby was Rivendell, but finding that the first time had been something of an accident, locating a single stone that hid the path in field of them was a daunting prospect. The only option seemed to be to travel to the northwest, and hope he ran into civilization or, even better, Gandalf. Until then it was only a little hobbit, and a pony, and the sky that stretched across the miles home.

But first he needed rest. 

* * *

_Bilbo dreamt that he sat on the plains, and that they were somehow Bag End and Erebor and a desolate grassland in the middle of nowhere, all at once. The air around him rang of home, and of loneliness, as if those things had somehow become wrapped up together. And he knew even more that it was a dream, because Thorin sat across from him._

_The dwarf looked haggard, pale as death with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. He was cloaked in the same ragged black shroud as the creature on the cliffs, the gauntlets he was buried in were dented and scratched free of decoration. They were no longer beautiful, only serviceable and made for killing. The hilt of Orcrist was visible, strapped to Thorin’s back and Bilbo thought he had never seen Thorin look so much like a warrior: not when he had first shown up at Bag End, not dripping with warg blood as they entered the hidden paths to Rivendell, not when he stood outlined by fire, facing down the Pale Orc while the pine trees burned._

_Thorin looked as if he had been reforged for the purpose, a soldier brought from the brink of death on the battlefield and sent to kill again, and die again, in some never ending cycle where his skill at both only increased. All that was soft and living about him burnt away until nothing but that purpose remained._

_This was impossible, part of Bilbo knew. Thorin lay in a mausoleum far below the cold earth, miles and miles away. If he looked both dead and alive at once, it was Bilbo’s fevered mind unable to reconcile the two. Part of him would always remember Thorin as he had been on Ravenhill. Wounded. Bloody. That day would replay again and again in Bilbo's mind, so perhaps that was why he appeared a warrior meant only for battle in this dream, prepared to relive the nightmare whenever Bilbo had it._

_His ring was in the dream, strange. Bilbo touched his breast pocket to assure himself, and because this was a dream it burned like fire to the touch. And because it was a dream, the ring of Thorin’s father pulsed cold blue malevolence on his hand, surrounded by scars and oozing black blood._

_“I imagine I’ll be having this dream many more times over the years, and I’ll wake up and you’ll still be gone. Like the dream of being late for lessons, it will keep coming back,” Bilbo laughed. His heart ached. “But I’m glad you are here now. I wish you could stay. I wish I didn’t have to wake up.”_

_And Thorin looked back at him, eyes dull and weary. Pain made his features tense, his hair fell lank about his face. He met Bilbo’s eyes, voice scraping as he rasped,_ “Run.”

* * *

Bilbo choked, snapping awake with his chest heaving. He passed a hand over the cold-sweat on his forehead, rubbing his eyes and opening to day’s light. His heart thundered, the dream not yet faded from his mind as they so often do, but still clear and vivid behind every blink of his eyes as if he could return straight back to it. Thorin, shadowed and ghostly, eyes empty and _lost_.

Bilbo shuddered from head to toe, and his pony snorted at the unexpected movement. It was exactly where he had left it, tethered to a boulder where they had made a pitiful camp. Was it his imagination, or was the grass just in front of him, where in his dream Thorin had sat… was it flatter than he remembered?

Bilbo shook his head to banish such fancies. Enough. He needed to get to Rivendell. It couldn’t be that far away, he thought he remembered these fields even without a wizard to guide them to the hidden path. He could refresh there, restock his supplies, perhaps have another of those long conversations with the wise elven lord. Perhaps ask him how any of this could be fair, or right, how stories could be allowed to end this way. 

It seemed the sort of thing Lord Elrond would know.

* * *

 

It was miles of hard riding through the night, the rain lashing down and darkness pressing down before Gandalf realized he was no longer pursued. 

He had felt the presence pressing down on them like a storm cloud on the horizon, and for perhaps a foolishly naive length of time, he had hoped it would pass them by. Many foul creatures fled the aftermath of the battle before Erebor’s gates. That this one had chosen the same direction as they, back towards the Misty Mountains, was not an impossibility. Yet its presence did not waver, but only grew larger in Gandalf’s mind with its inexorable approach. 

There was something strange about the presence, and strange in this instance only meant unsettling, enough so that Gandalf could even forget for a moment his pondering on the little invisibility ring Bilbo had picked up on his journey, and other less kindly souvenirs the hobbit brought home with him from his adventure: a torn map, an elven dagger, mithril armor, and a broken heart. Part of Gandalf was glad that Belladonna was not there for him to beg her forgiveness, but then perhaps she would have understood that loss and longing were the other side of the coin from adventure. 

He vowed that he would never again lead Bilbo anywhere that could bring him such grief. He vowed that he would see the hobbit he had watched grow up arrive home safely, even if he was not there to see it. For once they reached the heights of the Misty Mountains there could be no more doubt. 

They were hunted by one of the Nine.

Before the assault on Dol Guldur, he would have thought it impossible, but he had felt the unique signature of the Nazgûl, Sauron’s taint on the soul of a living being. This one felt familiar, yet wrong in some way. Perhaps it was only the effects of Galadriel’s banishment, but this presence felt weaker than those they had faced atop the tower, as if somehow less powerful. And there was that _wrongness_ about it, the stench of death not so overpowering as with the other eight kings of old. Vengeance could be its only cause, come back from the far off east in order to finish the job it had begun when Gandalf entered Dol Guldur.

Yet he could no longer sense it, why? Ever did Sauron seek the three elven rings that eluded his grasp, one of which Gandalf bore: Narya, the Ring of Fire. What other quarry could he seek? If Gandalf was not pursued, then where had the Nazgûl gone?

Gandalf’s head snapped as the realization struck and terror like ice rushed through his veins. He pulled up on the reins of his horse, turning around to look to the plains in the west.

“ _Bilbo_.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story updates weekly but there may be a slightly longer break after this chapter as I gear up for Part 2 . Please remember to click the Subscribe button so you don't miss an update! I also reach out personally to commenters when a new chapter is up, so leave a comment if you'd like a more personal touch :)

**Author's Note:**

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